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London foodie sisters going to war to bring back butter and offal

Two sisters from south London have told how they plan to revolutionise homecooking by going back to pre-wartime foods such as offal, bone broth and full-fat butter in place of modern “healthy” alternatives.

Ex-model Jasmine Hemsley, 34, and former fashion brand manager Melissa, 28, plan to change people’s attitudes by re-educating them with old-fashioned values such eating cheap cuts of meat, drinking raw milk and not being scared to use butter or animal fats.

They also condone using ghee or coconut oil to cook with instead of using artificial substitutes such as margarine.

The sisters, whose kitchen and office is based in Stockwell, started their business nearly five years ago with cooking lessons in friends’ homes and later in the homes of clients.

Since then they have become consultants and prominent food bloggers, writing for Vogue, and curating menus for private clients such as Louis Vuitton and for an event at the Royal Opera House.

They have now written a recipe book, The Art of Eating Well, which includes photography by Jasmine’s partner Nicholas Hopper, 39, to be published tomorrow.

Soon they hope to be television stars as well after being approached by a number of production companies.

The pair hope to raise awareness of the benefits of eating saturated fats and eating “clean” - as part of a healthy diet that embraces meat, organic fruit and vegetables and fish but avoids gluten, grain and refined sugar.

Jasmine said: “You’ve got all these restaurants like St John making eating meat cool but then there’s this other idea that eating meat is not healthy.

“Chicken liver and bone marrow were prized before the War. Offal, cheaper cuts of meat, making bone broth from carcasses and things because there was so much nutrition in that food, the same as fats and offal, definitely butter, they were really prized foods. Now they’re deemed unhealthy or bad for your heart and all sorts.”

She said although current television and celebrity chefs have helped to make home-cooked food “achievable and sexy”, she said more needs to be done to educate people on the value of some fats.

She said: “It would lovely to challenge that idea of cooking with oils at high heats and saying ‘oops’ as you put a small bit of butter in. Championing healthy fat like coconut oil and butter.”

She added: “They’re [fats are] natural. Our body needs fats. Your brain is made up of fat, your hormones, fat is such an essential food. It’s not something that man ever had to worry about before.

“I think the problem came when food became cheaper and manufacturers started altering fats, like trans fats.”

The sisters do promote the use of olive oil, but only extra virgin, and only ever cold or warm, not heated. They also use sesame, sunflower and flaxseed oils they only use cold.

“Saturated fats are more stable at high temperatures... You just have to look at the ingredients of margarine to see it’s not a natural product,” she said.